18-Year-Old Student Takes Summer Plumbing Job, Finds $10 Million Treasure (3 photos)

If you still think summer student jobs are just a dull way to earn pocket change, take a look at Kobe, an 18-year-old from Belgium. The teen picked up a holiday gig with a construction crew and, by his very first Tuesday on the job, set himself up for life. Well, almost.





The crew was dispatched to the municipality of Dendermonde to replace sewer pipes in the basement of a 19th-century villa. The mansion once belonged to local brewing tycoon Theophilus Van Assche, but the building is currently gutted for renovation into offices for a charitable foundation.

Kobe was digging a drainage trench when his shovel clanked against something hard inside the basement wall.

“At first, I thought someone had just spilled a few 1-euro coins,” the stunned student recalled. “But then we pulled an old bag out of the brickwork, and inside was a gold bar. Then another. And another.”

In total, the workers pried 49 numbered gold bars, gold nuggets, and a whole bag of vintage coins out of the hidden stash. Experts have already valued the basement haul at 9 million euros (over $10.4 million).



Naturally, the guys had a wild thought about tossing the gold into a trunk and driving off into the sunset. But foreman Mario brought everyone back to reality: “There was so much gold that hiding it and selling it quietly was impossible. That’s a major felony.” Reluctantly accepting their fate, the crew gave up the dream and called the police. The fortune has already been whisked away to a top-secret state vault in Brussels.

Under local law, a grueling five-year bureaucratic process (1,823 days to be exact) is now set to unfold.

First, prosecutors in East Flanders will cross-reference the bars against databases to see if they came from an unsolved bank heist a century ago.

Descendants of Van Assche, the brewing mogul, could also lay claim to the loot. The city's former mayor told the press that the family was obscenely wealthy and definitely hid stashes inside walls.



Even if no rightful heirs come forward over the next five years, Kobe won't get to keep it all himself. Belgian law dictates that unclaimed treasure is split 50/50 between the finder and the landowner—in this case, the charity. Meanwhile, the construction company itself is already trying to stake a claim through its lawyers.

Still, even if the teen walks away with "only" a quarter of the stash or a legal finder's fee, he's looking at a couple of million dollars. Not a bad boost to a student budget for a few hours of digging.